THE LITTLE THINGS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

For the holiday season, a little post of my Christmas Card from last year (above), along with a little story I'd like to tell.

A couple of years ago, the daytime soap All My Children closed its holiday episode with a song called "Christmas in the Heart" by a recording artist named Hugh Pool. I thought this was a very sweet and endearing little number, a sort of modern-day "Jingle Bell Rock" that deserves to become a classic passed down for generations just like that song. And I wanted to have a copy of it for myself. At the time, I didn't have a fully functional computer and was doing all of my surfing on library and cafe computers, and couldn't collect it from iTunes. This year I finally upgraded my computer to the MacBook I'm using now, and was ready to buy "Christmas in the Heart" from iTunes for the holidays--except for some reason iTunes had removed the thing and I couldn't find it anywhere else! After several futile attempts to find the song, I at last E-mailed Hugh Pool personally for help. After several weeks I assumed he was too busy to reply to me, or that he just didn't do favors of that kind for listeners. Imagine my surprise a few mornings ago when I checked my E-mail and found a note from Hugh with an MP3 of the song attached!

I would share the song with you here, but that would mean posting the MP3 for download with no way for Hugh to receive a cent from it, and after the exceptionally generous turn he did for me, I just didn't feel right about doing that. But I wanted to pass on this story just by way of saying that sometimes the pleasure of the holiday season is not in the big-ticket items we buy for ourselves and our loved ones, but in the decent little things we do for each other. So, one little picture from last year (the first time I've ever repeated a Christmas Card), one little story for the season, and one great big "Merry Christmas" to one and all.